Smoke alarm batteries

I understand that smoke alarms save lives, which makes them very important and one of the greatest inventions ever.

But they still bother me. As in really bother me when their batteries go dead. I’m still waiting for the first battery in one of my smoke alarms to go dead in the middle of the day when I’m wide awake.

Are they programmed to go dead in the middle of the night? I swear they are. It happened again last night. I woke up to a chirp. I thought, no, it can’t be the damn smoke alarm again. But 30 seconds later, another chirp.

Then it’s the same routine. I pretend I’m hearing things, that it couldn’t be the smoke alarm. I try to ignore it and go back to sleep. That never works. Chirp…chirp…chirp.

Then you track the chirping and try to figure out which smoke alarm is bothering you. That takes five to 10 minutes. It’s always hard to find the chirper. Then when you find it, it’s always the one that’s the hardest to get to, the one that you need an extension ladder to reach.

And then you need a new 9-volt battery. So I looked for one in the battery jar and we’ve got every battery size under the sun in there, but nary a 9-volt. So now I’m sitting here writing this post with chirp, chirp, chirping in the background when I should be driving to the hardware store to get another 9-volt battery. This is how lazy I am.

I know what will happen next. I’ll get the battery and replace it and then have a heck of a time rescrewing the lid of the smoke alarm onto the base. I’m challenged with these things. Then you stand there looking up at the smoke alarm praying that it won’t chirp anymore.

One time I got so frustrated that I just yanked the damn thing off the ceiling and thought, oh well, at least the chirping will stop. Nope, you’ve still got to replace the battery or the chirping will go on forever.

Why can’t they replace the chirp with a soothing female voice that tells you: “I’m sorry, but it’s time to replace your battery.” And why does it chirp every 30 seconds? After the first few chirps, you pretty much understand what’s happening.

Where there’s smoke, there’s fire, I get that too. But where there’s a smoke alarm with a dead battery, there’s something else, a highly irritated homeowner.